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Rarely does a game stick with me for negative reasons, unless it's just an absolute travesty like Superman 64 or Duke Nukem Forever. Stranger still is when a game continues to bother me for being exceedingly mediocre, which is why I'm still bitter about PlayStation All-Stars: Battle Royale.

Everyone knows that Super Smash Bros. is an instant system seller for whatever console is currently out. Whether it's 64, Melee or Brawl, each game has been one of the top selling titles of the system, and almost always draws one of the top prolonged play times, even after all the Mario, Zelda and Donkey Kong titles are beaten and shelved.

Therefore, it was a wonder why no other company ever decided to emulate Nintendo's style of fighting game. An all-star roster with the focus being on arena control rather than lifebars. But still, over the years, every fighting game remained more or less the same, and Super Smash Bros. continued to exist in a class all its own.

Then came along and made an announcement that seemed like it should have been said years ago; they would come out with their own fighting game with all their most famous characters in the roster. It also would be a four player, platforming, arena hazard-filled, item dropping-based combat system, and looked to be closer to Smash Bros. than anything else that had come along.

Kratos was fighting Nathan Drake, and squaring off against Sweet Tooth and PaRappa The Rapper. No, Sony didn't quite have as deep a roster as Nintendo's endless stable of classic first party characters, but it was still an incredibly cool line-up, and they even managed to port in third-party icons like BioShock's Big Daddy and Metal Gear Solid's Raiden. The stage was set for possibly the most promising new PlayStation IP in years.

Upon release, it soon became clear to reviewers and fans alike that though the game looked like a duck, and sounded like a duck, it was not in fact, a duck. Despite allegations that the game was borderline cloning Smash Bros, the final product deviated from the Smash formula in very important ways that negated the entire point of making a game like this in the first place.

Sony was fine copying everything about the gameplay and concept of Smash Bros, but they stopped short at the finish line, right when it counted.

Sony refused to use Nintendo's core mechanic of increased damage launching characters further and further off the screen. Smash Bros. based life loss around "edge guarding", and knocking characters off the sides of the screen or forcing them to plummet to their death. Here, Sony had employed a different system that was dramatically less fun.

Players landed moves until they could fill up their super "AP" meter. Each character had a Level 1, 2 and 3 super attack, each of which could insta-kill 1, 2 or 3 characters on the screen, depending on the move, and if you could land it. In other words, you spent all your time doing moves to your enemies that did no real damage to them, and instead just saved up enough juice to try and one-kit KO them. Miss, and you had to do it all over again. Fail to dodge that one move, and you're instantly dead.

The characters were cool, the moves were cool and even the arenas were cool, but this gameplay system? Decidedly not cool. So not cool, it sunk everything else positive about the title.

The game was a relative disaster when it should have been a crown jewel in PlayStation's exclusive line-up. It sold 0.5M copies to Smash Bros. Brawl's 11M+ on the Wii. Obviously a first run at a PlayStation Smash Bros. wouldn't unseat the champ, but the battle wasn't even close.

SuperBot, the company who developed the game for Sony, had their relationship with the game terminated and suffered layoffs in 2013. Sony Santa Monica took over the game from there, but because of its anemic sales, there's been little to do. This week, concept images of two new Journey and Gravity Rush levels for the game have surfaced, which is what prompted this article, but even with those being released, Santa Monica still maintains that there are no plans to release DLC for the game.

"Thank you for your continued support of PlayStation All-Stars and for keeping the community thriving. At this time we have no plans to release new content for PlayStation All-Stars," wrote a Sony representative in a prepared statement.

There may be a small, dedicated sect out there still playing All-Stars, but it would have to be very small indeed, and isn't the Smash Bros-like community Sony hoped to create.

What should have happened with this game is clear. Rather than being tossed into the tail end of the console generation, more time should have been spent in-house making PS All-Stars a true blockbuster title, and a PS4 launch game. There should have been infinitely more resources poured into development and marketing for the game, and it was shocking to see it released with such little fanfare. Perhaps Sony played it, realized it wouldn't be a hit, and abandoned it, but still, it was sad to see.

Most importantly, however, All-Stars needed to use the core combat system of the competitor they were trying to emulate. Rather, they invented a new sort of fighting system that was neither the traditional lifebars of Street Fighter and Tekken, nor the edge-guarding, high flying action of Super Smash Bros. It was a system that was anti-fun from the start, and missed the entire point of what made Smash Bros. great. It wasn't just the fact that you got to pit your favorite characters against each other, the novelty of that wears off fast, rather it was the gameplay and complexity of combat which made people play the game for years on end. I've played Super Smash Bros. 64 for close to 15 years now, and I can still boot up the game to this day and see something crazy in a match I've never witnessed before. With PS All-Stars, you felt like you'd seen it all in the first week.

I don't know if the PS All-Stars name or concept can be salvaged. The game was such a let down I'm not sure Sony would waste resources reworking the concept for the PS4, and I don't know if fans would take the same bait twice after the first game failed to live up to its massive potential.

Sony has many great exclusive titles that will undoubtedly make the PS4 a success, but I'll always mourn for the series that could have been, and PS All-Stars remains one of gaming's biggest disappointments.